Redeeming the Teacher
by Penn O'Hara
Summary: An expanding of the final scenes of Blind Spot, examining the emotions running rampant within Bobby. Emotions we could guess at, but he wouldn't let Jo or us see. My first Bobby solo. Edited to tighten some sloppy parts.


**"Redeeming the Teacher"**

_**Copyright 2006 Penn O'Hara**_

_**T**_

_**Usual disclaimers apply.**_

_**Timeline: During "Blind Spot", Season Six.**_

_**A/N: A post-ep solo Goren story for bammi1, who loyally ploughs through my Logan solos. Your sacrifice has been reciprocated. I hope you like it.**_

**oOo**

**"So that's when I decided to kill Eames and…and frame him," Jo Gage said, with as much emotion as if she were telling Goren about her plans to take a holiday.**

**Goren felt his face jerk and twist. His stomach bottomed, sickened by the coldness with which she said it; her total lack of remorse or guilt. **

**A click of the door heralded several officers entering the observation room, but Goren didn't acknowledge them. He fixed his concentration on Jo, his fury tunnelled as his hands itched to wring her neck. **

**"Jo, it's time." He caught his voice in a sob – aghast at the callousness of the father, the waste of the daughter's life – then he caught himself. He could _not _feel sorry for this woman. She had intended to kill Eames: take the life of one so dear to him, for no better reason than to demand the attention of another. **

**Guessing her guilt when he allowed himself the possibility of the killer being a woman, Goren had quietly angled for this confession, steeling himself not to react when it came. That resolve cost him. The effort needed to stay his ground smothered his open-mindedness. That she had good reason, that she was in some small way justified, was diminished by her choosing Eames as her final victim.**

**He did blame her. He suddenly hated this slight, demure woman, despising her with a passion that had murder at its core.**

_**You could have gone either way. **_

**He shut his eyes briefly, reining in his most basal instinct. He was better than that, which is why he was on this side of the window.**

**When Goren idolized Declan Gage, fascinated with the man's intuitive knack of seeing inside the criminal mind, Jo had been a blossoming woman. Not in the usual sense – of following fashion, pursuing relationships and discovering her sexuality. Instead, she had absorbed forensic reports and coroner findings brought home by her father, and followed court proceedings featuring sociopathic killers. Bobby had spent many hours in their home and Jo had been, he hated to admit it, just part of Declan's scenery. Neither men had paid her much attention.**

**She had his attention now.**

**His blood draining, Goren swayed, fully hit by how close he had come to losing his partner. Jo's plan could have been foolproof, its ultimate conclusion thwarted only by Eames' resourcefulness. Watching the uniforms escort her out of the observation room, Goren railed at Jo's insensitivity, horrified from where the threat had come.**

**His disguised interrogation of her in the observation room came back to him in flashes of detail as he tried to recall some sign of remorse from her.**

**But there had been none.**

**She was truly mad.**

**Mad from a dysfunctional adolescence, mad from lack of parental love.**

**Goren could so easily have been her.**

_**You could have gone either way.**_

**oOo**

**Ten minutes earlier… **

**"No one has ever listened to them," Declan said with confidence, his conviction absolute that he knew exactly how killers evolved.**

**And Goren noticed the first hardening of Jo. She pulled her thumb away from her thinned mouth, her eyes darkening as she examined the nail she had been chewing, then thrust it against her mouth again. She looked uncomfortable, annoyed even and, even though unable to quite believe it was she, Goren was starting to see the exposed underbelly of another cold-blooded killer. **

**He turned down the sound speaker that fed in from the interrogation room.**

**"Don't worry, Jo," he said, diverting her gaze from her father seated at the table in the next room. "He's not gonna confess 'cos he didn't do it." His voice was measured deliberately to not betray the intense anger charging through his body. **

**"How do you know?" Jo asked.**

_**I know this, because you did it, Jo. Why? How could you do that to innocent women? How could you be hell-bent on taking Eames away from me?**_

**He wasn't sure he could do this. He had to get a confession from her, but it was Jo. Declan's _daughter_, for chrissake.**

**She was putting on her coat and Goren still hadn't got what he needed. He turned his back on her and turned up the sound. Perhaps Declan's obsessed meanderings would catch her interest again, arrest and force her back to face the consequences of her actions.**

**He listened to Declan expound his theories on the psyche of a killer. **

**"A relief of being understood," Goren repeated Dec's blithe self-obsessed remark.**

**He sensed, more than heard, Jo hesitate, waiting for more. From him or her father? **

**"I envy you having a Dad like him," he said, killing the sound again, but he didn't mean it. Not now when the man's handling of his daughter had spawned such insanity.**

**"He wanted a son," she said.**

**_So you gave him a serial killer. _Not someone to follow in his footsteps, but instead, provide him with an interest in life, a reason for living. _This is not your purpose in life, Jo._**

**"He said you could have gone either way," Jo murmured, her eyes alert, shining with a glee tinged with lunacy.**

**"Either way?"**

**"Certain homes, he says, are like…potential labs for serial killers," she expanded, "…or crusading profilers." **

**_That's two of us. _Two people walking along Declan's path and Gage chose only one to nurture. Not his daughter as he should have, but a protégée whom he felt was more deserving of his time.**

**"I asked him," Goren said. "You know, he…he doesn't think that a woman… can achieve those heights or the…the depths that men do."**

_**But now I know differently.**_

**"I remember your home," Goren said, his nerves humming as he sought to keep his anger banked. "I remember all these…gruesome stacks of photos everywhere." Not the family snaps of father and daughter, or the daughter's accomplishments, but women with their lives cruelly ripped from them.**

**"I'm sorry, 'bout ah…" he said. "Look, I was so wrapped up in Declan's world, that um, I never noticed yours, and ah, I'm sorry for that." He was tripping over his words, illogically feeling the guilt for not seeing Jo as a woman; someone with a prior claim and a bond that should not have been pushed aside.**

**"He treated you more like an assistant than a daughter," he admitted, swallowing his culpability. _And I treated you like a piece of the furniture._**

**"And when you brought boys home?" he asked. For the first time since he'd known her, he encouraged her to talk. But it was not to better know her, but to implicate her in this gruesome crime. **

**She grinned, the memories chasing away her confusion. "I'd play them his tapes. Of women being tortured. If they didn't run, we'd make out…", her smile widened, "…in his office."**

**_Geezus, she entertained her boyfriends with that stuff. _Goren's shared grin was forced, masking his disgust at her admission.**

**"Well, you could have gone either way," he said, throwing back her own statement.**

_**And you plummeted into the only place left to you where you could get your father to see you as something of importance. Vying for the attention of the same man, she and Goren had never been more poles apart.**_

**"He never came to visit, did he?" Goren asked, knowing the answer.**

**"No, not unless it was a seminar," she said, her gaze flicking from Declan to him, back to her father again. "When this year's came up," she said, "I was ready."**

**The ground rocked at Goren's feet, but he held it together, not even the slightest facial twitch alerting her to the scent of his kill.**

**"He doesn't care about me," she said with bland acceptance. "All he cares about is his reputation…about Sebastian."**

_**Sebastian was your ticket into his world, but not his love, Jo. You should have demanded his love.**_

**The realization that she was about to damn herself wiped the last vestige of pretence from him. Impatient with her 'little girl lost' act, Goren gambled on leading a confession.**

**"So you brought Sebastian back," he said.**

_**And damned yourself.**_

**"I knew if he thought it was Sebastian…," she mused, "…we'd have something to talk about."**

**Stunned that her declaration of guilt had come so easily, Goren's mind raced away from his tongue. "Th…the first girl…" he said, needing clarification of certain inconsistencies, "…th…there were hesitation marks." **

**"Were there? It happened so fast." Jo seemed bewildered, as if surprised her crime had been second-rate.**

_**Dammit, Jo! You just dug your hole.**_

**"But it got his attention," she said, satisfied that her plan had not been in vain.**

_**And my attention too, Jo. Why did you drag me into this? **_

**"But then you were on the case," she said, "he totally lost interest in me. And that's when I decided to kill Eames and…and frame him."**

**Goren's teeth ground together at her stark statement. She seemed coy, almost pleased with herself.**

**"Tell my Dad everything," Jo said, turning around vaguely as her hands were cuffed by a female officer.**

**"'Cos he'll come to my cell," she said, her eyes entreating Goren to confirm her belief. "He'll talk to me and he'll listen, for as long it takes. He'll be there." **

**He nodded, letting out a wounded sigh, devastated at the waste of a life and disillusioned by the man who had allowed it to happen.**

**He turned to gaze at Declan through the glass, the true horror of the situation hitting him. She's hoping her father will treat her like one of his serial killers, giving her, finally, his undivided attention and dedication.**

_**This is how I redeemed the teacher, Declan. By bringing down your daughter.**_

**Leaning heavily on the window-sill of the observation room, Goren flexed his shoulders, feeling the tension and bearing the weight of his regret. He deep-breathed through the haze that buzzed in his head, then, pushing himself straight, he swung toward the door, ignoring Ross and his colleagues, and strode from the squad room to head for the lift.**

**He had to get out. He wasn't sure to where, but he couldn't stay there any longer. His steps took him to the One PP garage and he fumbled for and found the SUV keys in his pocket.**

**oOo**

**Following ME Rodgers' back as she led the way toward the bank of slabs in the Coroner's basement, Goren stretched his neck, his earlier tension turned into a full-blown headache. Rodgers had been difficult, vetoing his request until he'd finally worn her down with the persistence he knew she loathed.**

**Her mouth down-turned, she flourished a hand toward the end of the row. "Drawers zero-two-three to five," she said with distaste.**

**"That'll be all, Rodgers," he said, waiting for her to leave.**

**"If the case is closed as you say, I can't see why you would–"**

**"That will be all."**

**Swearing under her breath, she left him, and Goren waited until her receding footsteps diminished.**

**Pulling out 023, Goren gazed upon the shears-punctured body of Jo's first victim, the marks random; some deep, some slicing, the rash between her legs incongruous with the damage inflicted elsewhere. He was impervious to the sight of the naked body hacked across by glaring gashes, having seen too many cadavers before. He knew it to be no more than a shell, evidence of a life that could have been but was cut down before its time.**

**Jo's own room-mate was in 024 and Goren looked upon the cold mutilation of this second innocent with disbelief. Jo had been able to inflict this damage on someone she knew and who trusted her, without the excuse of its being a passion crime.**

**His fury returning, Goren yanked out the last drawer, the work colleague of the second victim. He winced at how petite she was, the body broken by unimaginable torture.**

**Goren blinked rapidly, his vision blurring.**

**The features of the cadaver transformed into firm lips he'd tasted, a snub nose he'd kissed and the sandy-lashed sweep of eyelids he'd gazed upon as Eames slept. Goren shuddered, his heart pummeling his chest. His cry of anguish had Rodgers' lifting her head and taking steps toward him, but he held up a hand to stop her. Hunching over the slab, he shook his head vehemently, then slowly stretched out a hand to touch the body.**

**The cold flaccid texture of it was replaced by the velvet warmth he felt when he touched Eames' skin. He ran a finger down the side of her breast and relived his caress of Eames' quivering flesh. He drew a circle around the navel and imagined the thrust of Eames' hips toward him.**

**With a strangled groan, Goren pushed off the metallic drawer and slammed it back into its cavity.**

**Dry eyes stinging, he bolted from the room, ignoring Rodgers' shout to stop and hurried to his car, careening into one morgue employee without apology and startling another as he burst through the double doors of the main office.**

**Aware that someone called out to him, he didn't hear the words nor heed the appeal. Exiting the building, he found his SUV, backed it out, tyres squealing, and hit the road, narrowly missing a sedan as he pushed his way into the traffic.**

**With no real destination in mind, Goren was not surprised when he became aware he was pulling into the car park of the hospital where they'd taken Eames. He dragged his feet to the room where she rested.**

**Her familiar and dear face was still pale, twitching with some unpleasant memory, her figure outlined by the thin hospital sheet. Goren couldn't prevent the flash to his mind of his image of her on the ME's metal slab, her pale body naked and scored by blue and bruised slashes, eyes lifeless and mouth stretched in a death-grin, thin arms beckoning as he poised to enter her.**

**Goren howled and ripped the sheet from her. Her body beneath it was pale but flawless, her breasts rising gently with her soft breaths. His body stirred and tightened, his hard-on sudden and painful.**

**He gasped. He'd nearly lost her. Unable to imagine his life without her, he felt keenly how little he could protect her when they were apart.**

**Appalled by his treatment of her sleeping form and his primal urge to take her there and make her his own, he cursed his insensitivity and selfishness. He was a brute, no better than the criminals he hunted and brought down. Swinging his head away, he squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing the bile of self-disgust.**

**Giving himself a moment to recover, he dared to gaze upon her again.**

**He reached out to touch her, stroking the back of his fingers lightly up her cheek. His heart swelled and his erection softened as sweet love flooded through his being, every fibre and pore balmed by the depth of his adoration for her. Leaning over, he pressed his lips softly to her cheek, a breath stirring her hair as his arms trembled to wrap themselves around her.**

**Fighting the urge to press himself upon her, Goren straightened from the bed and backed up to the open window, his gaze never leaving her. Dropping into the chair there, he hunched over his hands clasped near his knees and let out a sigh of despair.**

**He could love her, he could desire her, but he couldn't protect her. A madwoman, a stray bullet, a crazed knife-swinging perp could too easily take her from him.**

**As he watched over her still and vulnerable form, Goren's eyes burned with the first tears welling in his eyes.**

**oOo**


End file.
